“We have sent the petition and request to respond to the petition to Amazon 4 times now in the month of may, June and August, and October, however they have refused to acknowledge our efforts or engage in a discussion with us”
“We have asked Amazon to approve the disability union and they have not responded”
“Through our organizing and union group we generated 1120 Letter Signers on change org and 41,000 signatures on petition site https://www.thepetitionsite.com/218/528/287/amazon-is-allegedly-using-ai-to-illegally-discriminate-against-disabled-employees/”
“From our perspective Amazon is systemically violating the rights of those with disabilities, not having an interactive process and retaliating against those that speak up and creating a severe, persistent hostile work environment for those with disabilities”
“Amazon has consistently violated the NLRA, Civil Rights ACT and ADA rights of multiple organizers in our group and removed posts, sent threats to remove or takedown posts and have caused a chilling affect that is seen to this day with members and those with disabilities terrified to speak up”
“They are using illegal policies to unevenly discriminate against those with disabilities advocating for their rights. They have a channel called “you too can spam one trillion Amazonians” and channels where people talk about sports and food and what their doing after work but then Amazon selectively removes posts about workplace accessibility and discriminates and retaliates based on disability”
Amazon Executives told a disabled Amazonian experiencing discrimination "We don't want your story public"
If Amazon actually cares about those with disabilities at Amazon, then why do they stop disabled employees speaking out about systemic mistreatment and retaliate against them? These two positions are mutually exclusive. You cannot both care about disabled employees and silence their protected concerted speech. This is more like an abusive one sided relationship not to mention illegal.
“Members of the disability union disabled employees united disabled at Amazon provided the AI documents due to our belief that Amazon is illegally using AI to illegally discriminate against those with disabilities”
“We believe Amazons recent statements stating "they don’t use AI in the accommodations process" and "The accommodations process isn't automated" in the Guardian and Bloomberg articles, to be a lie as the documentation we provided clearly shows they do use AI and automation in the accommodation process in a way we believe is used to enact discriminatory and retaliatory policies"
We have documented with evidence the 5 lies Amazon told reporters and the public regarding disability issues
1. They lied to Bloomberg saying their accommodations process "is not automated"
2. They lied to the guardian by saying their accommodations process "is not automated"
3. They lied saying their accommodation process is "sympathetic," where most disabled Amazonians would describe it as abusive, illegal and bullying
4. They lie by saying they provide the "necessary accommodations" for those requesting them, when the reality is they actually deny necessary accommodations 95 percent of the time according to our surveys among disabled employees, our members testing of the Amazon accommodations application used by HR, and our inspection of the source code used for Amazon accommodations.
5. They lied by saying they allow employees to engage in organizing activities and don't retaliate, as we have published and documented 61+ instances where they violated the law by removing organizing speech, sent threats of discipline for engaging in Organizing protected activities, retaliated for engaging in protected activity till present day in the month of October of multiple members of our organizing group.
We have provided evidence on our website surrounding the 5 lies above that Amazon has told to the public regarding the handling of disability accommodations and their retaliation.